buffer underrun

[Sound Machine Inc]

I have a brand new dual core (i3 6g ram) rig set up with SAC on it and am running sawstudio (finally) on it and when pulling from SAC I get buffer underrun error left click blah blah blah.. now what SEEMS odd to me, is if I set the inputs to NOT be from mixer channel, but directly from the inputs (REM HDSP9652) BOTH systems work great and no slipped buffers.. SAC load is 11% with all my plugs and processing. drive is SSD showing 250mb write and 225mb read.. am tracking 24 mono inputs at once..

thoughts.. suggestions...options?

[905shmick]

How many mono and stereo tracks are you recording from SAC?

I've had trouble recording to an SSD drive before. Problem went away when I switched to a 7200 rpm spinning disk.

[Sound Machine Inc]

How many mono and stereo tracks are you recording from SAC?

I've had trouble recording to an SSD drive before. Problem went away when I switched to a 7200 rpm spinning disk.

24 mono and 0 stereo.. my major question is.. what must I fix for it to tap off SAC properly .. it works just spiffy if I pull direct from sound card

[905shmick]

24 mono and 0 stereo.. my major question is.. what must I fix for it to tap off SAC properly .. it works just spiffy if I pull direct from sound card

When pulling directly off the sound card, you mean from SAW without SAC or via the RME DIGICheck software?

[Sound Machine Inc]

When pulling directly off the sound card, you mean from SAW without SAC or via the RME DIGICheck software?


without SAC.. and WITH SAC on it works too.. just not FROM SAC

[Bob L]

Are you using Win 7.

It has been noticed that Win 7 seems to not do well with the multi-app memory sharing links... still looking into that...

Although that was just adding some cpu load... not causing buffer underruns.

You may want to try setting the XP SP 2 or 3 compatibility options on both SAC and SAWStudio on the desktop icons or the exe files themselves... this seems to be helping others with random issues within Win 7.

Bob L

[Sound Machine Inc]

Are you using Win 7.

It has been noticed that Win 7 seems to not do well with the multi-app memory sharing links... still looking into that...

Although that was just adding some cpu load... not causing buffer underruns.

You may want to try setting the XP SP 2 or 3 compatibility options on both SAC and SAWStudio on the desktop icons or the exe files themselves... this seems to be helping others with random issues within Win 7.

Bob L

on this machine it's a win xp sp3.. I know it never sees the extra ram.. but I know it's there for a future OS upgrade :)

on an odd side note.. SAME system on my main SAC rig works FINE with win 7 and same settings.. same SSD as well ...

[Naturally Digital]

Same ol troubleshooting techniques apply, as always have. You will need to examine the processes running to see what is loading the system down while going from SAC to SAW. You keep an eye on taskmanager while running tests. Run msconfig and disable suspect startup processes to see if any of that helps. Run DPC latency tool to watch for unusual spikes that load down the PCI bus etc etc.

You may want to try messing with the process affinity (in task manager) moving SAW.exe and/or SAC.exe to different (or same) cores to see what diff that makes (only made a diff for me when SAW/SAC were under heavy load).

Google your motherboard/chipset to see if you can find discussions of it's performance for audio. Back in the old days (LOL) it was necessary to choose a mb/chipset very carefully. Certain chipsets (remember 925x?) simply didn't do low latency audio under any circumstances.

I understand much of what I'm listing here doesn't apply to your situation since your system is stable while running one or the other program seperately. I'm just mentioning these issues for anyone having problems getting their rig to be stable.

Also I guess it's important to be sure you are running the correct drivers for your mb/SATA controller and other components. Since this is an i3 setup, XP drivers might be more difficult to find.

Is this 6GB ram a triple-channel memory setup? Just wondering if there's anything suspect in that department...

This seems like a new one...

[Sound Machine Inc]

Same ol troubleshooting techniques apply, as always have. You will need to examine the processes running to see what is loading the system down while going from SAC to SAW. You keep an eye on taskmanager while running tests. Run msconfig and disable suspect startup processes to see if any of that helps. Run DPC latency tool to watch for unusual spikes that load down the PCI bus etc etc.

You may want to try messing with the process affinity (in task manager) moving SAW.exe and/or SAC.exe to different (or same) cores to see what diff that makes (only made a diff for me when SAW/SAC were under heavy load).

Google your motherboard/chipset to see if you can find discussions of it's performance for audio. Back in the old days (LOL) it was necessary to choose a mb/chipset very carefully. Certain chipsets (remember 925x?) simply didn't do low latency audio under any circumstances.

I understand much of what I'm listing here doesn't apply to your situation since your system is stable while running one or the other program seperately. I'm just mentioning these issues for anyone having problems getting their rig to be stable.

Also I guess it's important to be sure you are running the correct drivers for your mb/SATA controller and other components. Since this is an i3 setup, XP drivers might be more difficult to find.

Is this 6GB ram a triple-channel memory setup? Just wondering if there's anything suspect in that department...

This seems like a new one...
nah it's a dual channel setup. the part that is baffling to me is the both work fine simultaneously.. just not connected :(.. if I scratch my head any more I may draw blood lol

[Bob L]

Well... the difference is that when the SACLink is engaged you are passing data thru shared memory functions of the OS... anything that interferes with those functions could cause a problem...

So... it would appear something is getting stomped on to seriously slow down the memory transfers of those Windows functions.

Unfortunately its not necessarily obvious what is causing the slow down.

Can you record successfully to a harddrive... even a usb external if your system has no internal physical drives?

Bob L

[Sound Machine Inc]

Well... the difference is that when the SACLink is engaged you are passing data thru shared memory functions of the OS... anything that interferes with those functions could cause a problem...

So... it would appear something is getting stomped on to seriously slow down the memory transfers of those Windows functions.

Unfortunately its not necessarily obvious what is causing the slow down.

Can you record successfully to a harddrive... even a usb external if your system has no internal physical drives?

Bob L
I haven't tried the USB route yet.. I may do that tomorrow as I have to open the rack and install a USB jack panel.. hell maybe later I'll even try tracking to a thumb drive.. and I'll start playing with the whole force single cpu and affinity options and see what I can draw out..

[905shmick]

What sample rate & bit depth are you using in SAC compared to SAW on it's own?

[Sound Machine Inc]

What sample rate & bit depth are you using in SAC compared to SAW on it's own?
both are 16bit 44.1k